Spitzer Cites Hoax in Game Report

As part of a 20 minute slide show produced by the New York Dept. of Criminal Justice, Elliot’s Spitzer’s administration has cited a well-known Internet hoax as a helpful resource for parents.

The site cited, Mothers Against Videogame Addiction and Violence (mavav.org) claims to be:

organization is dedicated to educating parents of the world’s fastest growing addiction and the most reckless endangerment of children today: Video Game Addiction and Violence in Underground Video Game Cultures

The site goes on to claim that:

Video game addiction is without a doubt, becoming this century’s most increasingly worrisome epidemic, comparable even to drug and alcohol abuse. All the while, the video game industry continues to market and promote hatred, racism, sexism, and the most disturbing trend: clans and guilds, an underground video game phenomenon which closely resembles gangs.

MAVAV is actually the creation of a New York design school student, a well documented fact that is easily uncovered by research. And by research I mean about 2 minutes Googling the farcical organization. Too great a burden for the NY DOJ.

The NY Justice Dept. report also contained a reference to several over-hyped stories of questionable reliability and is riddled with errors. In addition, the report claims that Seung Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer, was a Counter-Strike player, a claim that has since been shown to be unsubstantiated.

If this is the worst indictment that the insidious legal mind of Elliot Spitzer can produce, gamers might not have to worry about New York’s proposed regulation of video game sales.

Cord Blomquist / Cord Blomquist spends most of his time pining for the singularity. To pass the time while waiting for this convergence, he serves as the New Media Manager at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before landing this sweet gig, Cord hocked policy writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, toiled in the halls of Congress, and even worked in a crouton factory. In college, Cord spent his hours studying political philosophy and artificial intelligence, resulting in an unhealthy obsession with Lt. Commander Data. All of these activities will, of course, be viewed as laughable when he is ported from this crude meatspace into the nanobot cloud.